Native Games

Honoring Tribal Legacies hosted a workshop at Yellowstone National Park in April 2018 that was taught by the amazing educators of the International Traditional Games Society (501 Euclid Avenue, Helena, MT 59601; www.traditionalnativegames.org; tel. 406-996-1222). Some 25 parks personnel came from various states to learn how to play and teach a number of games. We obtained a Level I certification at the end of several days spent both playing games and making game pieces. The Society educators have been working to both gather information about games and to disseminate that information. They find some games recur across multiple tribes, sometimes with slight variation. A few of the games we learned are listed below. Follow the link to read introductions, game instructions, and see photographs of game pieces and sometimes people playing the games.

The workshop involved two types of games, physical games (for instance, played outdoors, sometimes by teams) and intuitive games (for smaller numbers, often played indoors).

For curriculum about traditional Native games, please see the online PDF from Indian Education for All, Montana, Office of Public Instruction.